Posts [ 13 ]

Topic: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

I wasn't sure which thread to put this in so please feel free to move it if need be.

Currently I'm using slicehost for my site and I'm happy with the service but having to take care of the administrative end as well as the web site and the 20 bucks a month I was thinking of switching to hostgator. They are only 5 bucks a month and I have another site there but it's php not RoR and I was just wondering if anyone has tried them and if so how was it? How was the speed of the site? Currently I have an SVN repository and deploy with Capistrano via SSH. I believe I can still do it this way at Hostgator from what I've read.

Any input or alternate hosts are appreciated, I'm looking to cut costs since the site is not a revenue generator and right now any saved money is good!

Re: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

Find out how its running, Passenger, Mongrel? How are you running your current app? Is it on mongrel or passenger? How much memory does it use? Will HostGator be able to give you this? How many instances do you run?

As you can see there is a lot to think about and generally shared hosting isn't great for Rails, although it is better than it was due to passenger, but generally I would recommend it only for very small applications.

Also if you use a shared host be sure to freeze all your gems into vendor and rails as well to make sure you have all you need for the application to work.

Re: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

Thanks for the input!One of the main things I liked though about shared hosting is that I could finally have email with my domain.I'm reading up on setting up my own email server on my account at slice host.Has anyone here done this at slicehost?

Re: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

Webfaction has better support for Rails (this screencast shows how easy it is to set up Rails--you can also set up WordPress, Django, etc.), is shared hosting and costs less than half of Slicehost. Hostgator may nominally offer Rails, but for $5 a month? What do you expect to get?

I would give Webfaction a try. They offer a full refund if you ask for it within 60 days of signing up

Re: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

Thanks everyone!I've decided to stay with slicehost and setup virtual domains and move my other sites to my slice to save money. The other sites are really not heavy traffic so there are basic html placeholders.

Re: Has anyone used hostgator for RoR yet?

Even though you made your decision I figured I would post my experience for others ...

I have hosted a few RoR applications with HostGator and am still hosting some with them. I use SVN and Capistrano. It works great for basic sites that do not have huge performance limitations. Really it works fine unless you have a really high-traffic site or intensive background processes. Being a shared environment you don't have the freedom to control your environment but HG was always happy to install gems for me and usually installed them within 15 minutes of my requests. Their tech support is generally good but a little lacking when it comes to RoR. I typically had to figure out issues on my own or I figured them out before they did.

My biggest complaint was that they must run some process monitors to monitor for traffic on your site and if there is none they kill the FCGI process (your RoR process). When your site is hit for the 1st time it has to start up the process which can take anywhere from 3 - 25 seconds (based on my experience). I have a cronjob hit my site every 15 minutes but that isn't often enough to keep the process alive. For the shared environment your cronjob frequency is limited to >=15 minutes (for the same job).

If you are just getting started HG works great for a nice cheap price but if you need performance and/or flexibility then you are better off going with a VPS setup. I have been using Linode for my more important RoR applications and I love it!